Maya DiMeo (Minnie Driver) races to the family van with a coupon for 50% off breakfast that expires in 3 minutes. Her husband Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) and daughter Dylan (Kyla Kennedy) buckle up. Her son Ray (Mason Cook) objects, pointing out that the restaurant is 10 minutes away and there's no way they can get there in time. Maya takes this as a challenge and the van speeds off. Jimmy hands his wife coffee and navigates as she calmly and confidently avoids construction by barrelling down a one-way alley, and goes off-road when a broken down car causes a traffic jam, only stopping so Dylan can yell at the annoyed driver for not putting oil in the car before getting on the road. She speeds past a cop car that wisely declines to go after her ("Life's too short", advises the older cop to his young partner) and makes it to the restaurant, snagging the last handicap spot. An older lady objects to their lack of handicap placard, but the DiMeo's are too busy unloading their secret weapon, J.J. (Micah Fowler), their wheel-chair bound teenage son with severe cerebral palsy. The older woman drives off as two bystanders smirk and laugh. Maya calls them out and J.J. flips them off to the best of his abilities. "Work in progress", Maya explains. Cue title card.
That opening scene is Speechless in a nutshell and perfectly introduces Maya as someone who won't let anything or anyone get in the way of what her family (J.J. in particular) deserves with the rest of the DiMeo's along for the ride whether they like it or not. Created by Scott Silveri (who grew up with a brother with cerebral palsy), Speechless (which debuts tonight on ABC, where it'll air every Wednesday after The Goldbergs) is a smart, gutsy comedy that like other family comedies that have debuted on ABC in recent years (black-ish and Fresh Off The Boat chief among them) showcases a family that doesn't get portrayed on TV that often: a family with a special needs child. More importantly, it showcases them in a way that allows them to be complicated and flawed and funny, wisely avoiding the urge to go overly saccharine with the show or put J.J. on a pedestal to be admired as an inspiration (as J.J's new classmates are ready to do in the pilot).
That treatment of J.J. is essential to the success of the pilot. Brought to life by Micah Fowler, an actor who has cerebral palsy (though not as severe as J.J., who is nonverbal strapped to his ear and needs a laser pointer and keyboard to communicate.), J.J. comes across as a normal teenage boy who just wants to talk to girls and be cool. He gets annoyed when his mother makes a fuss over him or when his new classmates want to elect him student council president before they've even met him. He knows how to take advantage of his condition to get his way. He's a bit of a jerk, picking on Ray and running off his initial aide because her voice isn't cool enough for his liking, but he does love his family and will do what it takes to help them out. All of this is expertly portrayed by Fowler who brings a lot of personality to everything J.J. does and making his limited range of motion an asset. It makes you confident that J.J. won't be treated as a prop or conduit for other character's stories, but as a compelling character in his own right.
In the first episode Fowler makes a strong impression, but the biggest and strongest impression by far belongs to Minnie Driver. As Maya, the mother who has moved her family six times in the past two years in search of the perfect situation for J.J. and who has fought tooth and nail to ensure he gets something close to a normal life, Driver is perfect, bringing an intense ferocity to everything Maya does, but also a bit of underlying weariness. You get the sense that that this woman is always fighting because that's what she's had to do for J.J's entire life. Maya's intensity could grow quickly exhausting in lesser hands, but Driver brings enough warmth and understanding to the role to keep her likeable, even with her flaws.
It's an impressive performance and one that could dominate the show, but luckily it's surrounded by strong performances across the board. The pilot is wisely told largely from the perspective of Ray (Mason Cook). Cook does excellent as a kid who loves his family, but is tired of all the moving around and a bit resentful that Maya puts J.J.'s needs ahead of everyone else. He comes across as a sensible voice while still being a kid who's prone to making mistakes like kids do. As Jimmy, John Ross Bowie isn't given a ton to do yet beyond play sarcastic, yet supportive, but he brings a lot to those notes to make Jimmy a funny, interesting character who gets a lot of the pilots bigger laughs (His tour of "the worst house in the best neighbourhood" has the family has moved to is an episode highlight). Kyla Kenedy also doesn't get a lot to do yet, but Dylan's ultra competitiveness in a school environment that tries to celebrate everyone should lead to comic dividends down the line. The character who needs the most fleshing out going forward is Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough), the school groundskeeper who butts heads with Maya immediately but seems set to be J.J.'s new full-time aide by the end of the pilot. Yarbrough's dry delivery is terrific and he and Driver have good rapport, but hopefully Kenneth will get more dimension than just simply "the cool guy".
Beyond casting, what Speechless really has going for it in the pilot is a sense of perspective. Having a child with special needs can be a challenge and a strain to a family and the show isn't afraid to highlight that. When Ray and Maya fight because he's tired of her putting J.J over everyone else, he isn't presented as being in the wrong. There's real pain there and it will be interesting to watch the show explore that going forward. Of course having a child with special needs isn't a total burden either and the show gets that too. It's unafraid to mine the situation for comedy, from the terrible house the DiMeo family has to move to so J.J can go to his latest school, to the school itself, which is desperate to come across as inclusive and progressive (they recently changed their mascot from the Vikings to the Sea Slug, which has both male and female genitalia) to a late-episode quip from Jimmy about which child would be best to run after Maya and which would be best to wait in the van (This earns him the finger from J.J, which he admits is fair). It makes Speechless warm and welcoming, but also clever and biting and fearless. All in all Speechless is off to a strong start and if you're into comedies with a strong perspective, it definitely looks to be well worth your time.
Wednesday, 21 September 2016
Monday, 19 September 2016
The Good Place Gets Off To A Good Start
What does it mean to be a "good person" or a "bad person"? Can bad people learn to be better? Is there life after death? These are fairly heavy, often quite debated questions that come up in the course of a lifetime and while we all probably have our own answers to these questions, they're not the kind of questions that can be definitively answered. That won't stop NBC's new afterlife comedy The Good Place from trying though, and those questions are at the heart of Michael Schur's (Co-Creator of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) provocative new show which debuted Monday night with a 2-part premiere, before it moves to it's regular timeslot on Thursdays.
In The Good Place, there is an afterlife but it's not like anything you've been taught about. All major religions got maybe 5% of it right (Except for Doug Forcett, a stoner who lived in Calgary who guessed 92% of it while on mushrooms one night). Essentially every action you do in life from eating a sandwich to poisoning a river is given a positive or negative point value based on how much good or bad it sends through the universe. This is all monitored and once you die your score is added up. Those with the highest of high scores go to The Good Place, everyone else goes to "The Bad Place" (though what this means is left unexplained beyond a terrifying audio recording of roars and screams.). The Good Place is a series of neighbourhoods, perfectly designed for the 322 people that live in each one by an architect who oversees the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood The Good Place is set in is a pleasant suburban setting with a frozen yogurt shop on every corner (something all neighbourhoods have in common) and stores with names like "Everything Fits" or "All The Books". Each resident lives in a house perfectly designed to their tastes and meets their soulmate who is their universe-ordained perfect match. A walking database of knowledge named Janet (D'Arcy Carden) pops up in an instant to help with any question or request. All the words spoken are translated into the listeners preferred language. It's paradise. A very exclusive paradise (Mozart, Picasso, Elvis, basically all artists, every President except Lincoln, and Florence Nightingale all missed the cut) but paradise all the same.
Into paradise comes Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a woman who may have had an embarrassing death (A shopping cart mishap while trying to pick up "Lonely Girl's Margarita Mix For One" caused her to get swept into the street where she was hit by a mobile billboard truck for an Erectile Dysfunction product and the first paramedic on scene was an ex-boyfriend), but who's exemplary life as a lawyer who got innocent people off death row and who routinely went on humanitarian missions helping orphans has earned her a place in paradise, according to Neighbourhood Architect Michael (Ted Danson), along people like smug do-gooder Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil), a monk who won't break his vow of silence even in death and Tahani's soulmate Jianyu (Mandy Jacinto), and Eleanor's soulmate Chidi (William Jackson Harper) who was a professor who taught Ethics and Moral Philosophu. The only problem is that there's been a mistake and she's not the person Michael thinks she is. She was the kind of person who sold fake medicine to seniors (and was salesperson of the year 5 years in a row), the kind of person who would drink before work drink night to get out of her turn being designated driver and the kind of person who deserves the bad place. Of course she would rather stay in The Good Place and so she turns to Chidi, who just might be willing to help teach her how to be a good person so she can fit in and avoid getting caught. It won't be easy (especially because Eleanor's negative actions cause catastrophic storms to affect the neighbourhood) but with paradise on the line, Eleanor has no choice but to try and pull it off.
Everything Is Fine/Flying, the 2-part opener of The Good Place, has a lot to get through in about 42 minutes of television. It has to introduce the characters, lay out the premise, set up an elaborate world and explain how it works, while telling a compelling story and scoring laughs along the way. For the most part it pulls it off. NBC made a smart choice in airing both parts of the episode together because Everything Is Fine would be a lot less satisfying (albeit pretty entertaining as any episode of television that ends with the chaotic sight of giant ladybugs and frogs, flying shrimp, and a herd of giraffes would have to be) without Flying right after to complete the story it's telling. Additionally Everything Is Fine has to take the burden of laying out the majority of the exposition of how The Good Place works so there's not time for much else. Luckily the exposition is laid out in a way that's entertaining and allows for plenty of jokes (I transcribed what I could of the elaborate point system that determines who gets in The Good Place below. This show is looking to be heaven for lovers of blink-and-you-miss-it gags like that) and Kristen Bell and Ted Danson are charming enough to keep the pilot from becoming dull or uninteresting. Flying is more set-up, but it gets to focus on the story of Eleanor trying to convince Chidi that there's a part of her worth saving so he'll help her try to keep her secret. It's a story that feels more complete than the story of Everything Is Fine, while also creating a compelling path for the series to move forward and now that we have that path, subsequent episodes should be a lot smoother. Also on the plus, the mystery of how and why Eleanor wound up here that the show subtly sets up over these first couple episodes is already compelling and offers a lot to hang on to going forward as well.
If there's one thing about The Good Place that seems perfect off the bat though, it's the casting. Eleanor is a deeply flawed person who we really shouldn't be rooting for, but Kristen Bell makes her feel likeable and human, even at her most selfish. Her desire to stay in this place no matter the consequences to the deserving people around her is greedy sure, but can anyone really blame her? Meanwhile, as Michael, who has finally gotten a chance to design his own neighbourhood after a 200-year-long apprenticeship and is devastated that there's a flaw in his perfect system, Ted Danson steals the show. Michael is clearly not used to having an earthly body or dealing with earthly emotions and it comes through in Danson's impeccable line-readings and acting. His desire to have everything be perfect on his first big opportunity is very understandable and can only lead to great things for the show going forward. William Jackson-Harper is no slouch either, playing Chidi with exasperation (who wouldn't be exasperated going to paradise only to find themselves confronted with a selfish mess of a soulmate) and nervousness, but also kindness and empathy. His interactions with Bell were the best parts of the first two episodes and their relationship should prove to be very compelling going forward. As for the supporting players, Tahani, Jianyu and Janet haven't made much of an impression yet (though Jamil nails Tahani's condescending perfectness and D'Arcy scores a few laughs with Janet's matter-of-fact delivery), but given Schur's track record for developing deep ensembles, I'm sure they'll get there in time.
The Good Place has not set an easy bar for itself to clear. It's ambitious and bold and I can imagine it's premise and environment being quite weird and alienating for viewers who prefer their comedies simpler (which is fair, I guess). It doesn't seem like the kind of show that's long for this world. I hope it lasts a couple seasons at least though, because it has the potential to become a show that's truly unique and special on the TV landscape. Everything Is Fine/Flying have introduced us to the world and gotten all the heavy lifting out of the way. Now it's time to watch this show soar.
Memorable Moments
-As mentioned above, I went through the Orientation Video and got all of the positive and negative actions (and most of the point values listed so you don't have to (unless you wanted to). Voila:
Eat a Sandwich +1.04
Buy a Trashy Magazine -.75
Hug Sad Friend +3.67
Plant Baobob Tree in Madagascar +5.25
Stiff a Waitress -3.21
Use "Facebook" as a verb. -5.55
Use the Term "Bro Code" -8.20
Poison A River -4010.55
Disturb Coral Reef with Flipper -55.02
Fix Broken Tricycle For Child Indifferent to Tricyles +1.12
Fix Broken Tricycle For Child Who Loves Tricycles +6.60
Rev a Motorcycle -
-Root For New York Yankees -
Save A Child From Drowning +890.04
Remain Loyal to the Cleveland Browns +53.83
Blow Nose By Pressing Down Nostril and Exhaling -7.14
Tall a Woman to "Smile" -53.83
Remember Sister's Birthday +15.02
Be Commissioner of National Football League (American) -824.55
Purify Water (Village) Pop: >250 +294.26
Ruin Opera With Boorish Behaviour -90.90
Pet A Lamb +3.89
Scratch Elbow +1.10
Step Carefully Over Flower Bed +2.09
Stealing Copper Wire From Decommissioned Military Base -16.00
Maintain Composure in Water Park Line in Houston +60.98
Fail to Disclose Camel Illness When Selling Camel -22.22
Harassment (Sexual) -731.26
Overstate Person Connection to Tragedy That Has Nothing To Do With You -40.77
End Slavery +814292.09
Commit Genocide About -433401.86 (exact value not given)
-As for all the positive actions from the life of the person in the orientation video, I opted not to list them all but these are the highlights
Ate Vegan
Never Discussed Veganism Unprompted
Gave Out Full-Size Candy Bars At Halloween
Self-Monitored Potentially Nauseating Mouth Sounds While Chewing
Began to Compose Social Media Post About David Bowie Dying And Then Thought The World Doesn't Need To Hear My Thoughts on David Bowie
Researched West Indies Test Cricket Tournament Results to Facilitate Conversation with Father-In Law
-As someone who lives in Calgary, the story of Doug Forcett was my favourite joke of the episode (I'm very biased).
-"The bear has two mouths!"- overheard on the Bad Place audio.
-Example of how good everyone else in The Good Place is. "So then he said 'You can't give me both your kidneys. You'll die.' And I said 'but you will live, and I know we just met on this bus 10 minutes ago but you seem nice'".
-"We don't know what it is, how long it'll last or what caused it. What do we know Janet?" "We know where it happened: here".
-Eleanor's favourite "book" is Kendall Jenner's Instagram feed.
-"I have to say this neighbourhood you've built is tuly a masterpiece, the likes of which I've never seen, and I've been to Johnny Depp's private bird sanctuary".
-Some people think of their wedding day or favourite vacation spot to get the joy needed to fly. Eleanor thinks of people puking on roller coasters.
-"We could've literally been flying and all you wanted to do is talk about morals. You're like the worst parts of Superman!"
-Not a memorable moment but just a note that I'm planning to recap The Good Place throughout the season. Will I follow through on this? Hopefully.
In The Good Place, there is an afterlife but it's not like anything you've been taught about. All major religions got maybe 5% of it right (Except for Doug Forcett, a stoner who lived in Calgary who guessed 92% of it while on mushrooms one night). Essentially every action you do in life from eating a sandwich to poisoning a river is given a positive or negative point value based on how much good or bad it sends through the universe. This is all monitored and once you die your score is added up. Those with the highest of high scores go to The Good Place, everyone else goes to "The Bad Place" (though what this means is left unexplained beyond a terrifying audio recording of roars and screams.). The Good Place is a series of neighbourhoods, perfectly designed for the 322 people that live in each one by an architect who oversees the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood The Good Place is set in is a pleasant suburban setting with a frozen yogurt shop on every corner (something all neighbourhoods have in common) and stores with names like "Everything Fits" or "All The Books". Each resident lives in a house perfectly designed to their tastes and meets their soulmate who is their universe-ordained perfect match. A walking database of knowledge named Janet (D'Arcy Carden) pops up in an instant to help with any question or request. All the words spoken are translated into the listeners preferred language. It's paradise. A very exclusive paradise (Mozart, Picasso, Elvis, basically all artists, every President except Lincoln, and Florence Nightingale all missed the cut) but paradise all the same.
Into paradise comes Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a woman who may have had an embarrassing death (A shopping cart mishap while trying to pick up "Lonely Girl's Margarita Mix For One" caused her to get swept into the street where she was hit by a mobile billboard truck for an Erectile Dysfunction product and the first paramedic on scene was an ex-boyfriend), but who's exemplary life as a lawyer who got innocent people off death row and who routinely went on humanitarian missions helping orphans has earned her a place in paradise, according to Neighbourhood Architect Michael (Ted Danson), along people like smug do-gooder Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil), a monk who won't break his vow of silence even in death and Tahani's soulmate Jianyu (Mandy Jacinto), and Eleanor's soulmate Chidi (William Jackson Harper) who was a professor who taught Ethics and Moral Philosophu. The only problem is that there's been a mistake and she's not the person Michael thinks she is. She was the kind of person who sold fake medicine to seniors (and was salesperson of the year 5 years in a row), the kind of person who would drink before work drink night to get out of her turn being designated driver and the kind of person who deserves the bad place. Of course she would rather stay in The Good Place and so she turns to Chidi, who just might be willing to help teach her how to be a good person so she can fit in and avoid getting caught. It won't be easy (especially because Eleanor's negative actions cause catastrophic storms to affect the neighbourhood) but with paradise on the line, Eleanor has no choice but to try and pull it off.
Everything Is Fine/Flying, the 2-part opener of The Good Place, has a lot to get through in about 42 minutes of television. It has to introduce the characters, lay out the premise, set up an elaborate world and explain how it works, while telling a compelling story and scoring laughs along the way. For the most part it pulls it off. NBC made a smart choice in airing both parts of the episode together because Everything Is Fine would be a lot less satisfying (albeit pretty entertaining as any episode of television that ends with the chaotic sight of giant ladybugs and frogs, flying shrimp, and a herd of giraffes would have to be) without Flying right after to complete the story it's telling. Additionally Everything Is Fine has to take the burden of laying out the majority of the exposition of how The Good Place works so there's not time for much else. Luckily the exposition is laid out in a way that's entertaining and allows for plenty of jokes (I transcribed what I could of the elaborate point system that determines who gets in The Good Place below. This show is looking to be heaven for lovers of blink-and-you-miss-it gags like that) and Kristen Bell and Ted Danson are charming enough to keep the pilot from becoming dull or uninteresting. Flying is more set-up, but it gets to focus on the story of Eleanor trying to convince Chidi that there's a part of her worth saving so he'll help her try to keep her secret. It's a story that feels more complete than the story of Everything Is Fine, while also creating a compelling path for the series to move forward and now that we have that path, subsequent episodes should be a lot smoother. Also on the plus, the mystery of how and why Eleanor wound up here that the show subtly sets up over these first couple episodes is already compelling and offers a lot to hang on to going forward as well.
If there's one thing about The Good Place that seems perfect off the bat though, it's the casting. Eleanor is a deeply flawed person who we really shouldn't be rooting for, but Kristen Bell makes her feel likeable and human, even at her most selfish. Her desire to stay in this place no matter the consequences to the deserving people around her is greedy sure, but can anyone really blame her? Meanwhile, as Michael, who has finally gotten a chance to design his own neighbourhood after a 200-year-long apprenticeship and is devastated that there's a flaw in his perfect system, Ted Danson steals the show. Michael is clearly not used to having an earthly body or dealing with earthly emotions and it comes through in Danson's impeccable line-readings and acting. His desire to have everything be perfect on his first big opportunity is very understandable and can only lead to great things for the show going forward. William Jackson-Harper is no slouch either, playing Chidi with exasperation (who wouldn't be exasperated going to paradise only to find themselves confronted with a selfish mess of a soulmate) and nervousness, but also kindness and empathy. His interactions with Bell were the best parts of the first two episodes and their relationship should prove to be very compelling going forward. As for the supporting players, Tahani, Jianyu and Janet haven't made much of an impression yet (though Jamil nails Tahani's condescending perfectness and D'Arcy scores a few laughs with Janet's matter-of-fact delivery), but given Schur's track record for developing deep ensembles, I'm sure they'll get there in time.
The Good Place has not set an easy bar for itself to clear. It's ambitious and bold and I can imagine it's premise and environment being quite weird and alienating for viewers who prefer their comedies simpler (which is fair, I guess). It doesn't seem like the kind of show that's long for this world. I hope it lasts a couple seasons at least though, because it has the potential to become a show that's truly unique and special on the TV landscape. Everything Is Fine/Flying have introduced us to the world and gotten all the heavy lifting out of the way. Now it's time to watch this show soar.
Memorable Moments
-As mentioned above, I went through the Orientation Video and got all of the positive and negative actions (and most of the point values listed so you don't have to (unless you wanted to). Voila:
Eat a Sandwich +1.04
Buy a Trashy Magazine -.75
Hug Sad Friend +3.67
Plant Baobob Tree in Madagascar +5.25
Stiff a Waitress -3.21
Use "Facebook" as a verb. -5.55
Use the Term "Bro Code" -8.20
Poison A River -4010.55
Disturb Coral Reef with Flipper -55.02
Fix Broken Tricycle For Child Indifferent to Tricyles +1.12
Fix Broken Tricycle For Child Who Loves Tricycles +6.60
Rev a Motorcycle -
-Root For New York Yankees -
Save A Child From Drowning +890.04
Remain Loyal to the Cleveland Browns +53.83
Blow Nose By Pressing Down Nostril and Exhaling -7.14
Tall a Woman to "Smile" -53.83
Remember Sister's Birthday +15.02
Be Commissioner of National Football League (American) -824.55
Purify Water (Village) Pop: >250 +294.26
Ruin Opera With Boorish Behaviour -90.90
Pet A Lamb +3.89
Scratch Elbow +1.10
Step Carefully Over Flower Bed +2.09
Stealing Copper Wire From Decommissioned Military Base -16.00
Maintain Composure in Water Park Line in Houston +60.98
Fail to Disclose Camel Illness When Selling Camel -22.22
Harassment (Sexual) -731.26
Overstate Person Connection to Tragedy That Has Nothing To Do With You -40.77
End Slavery +814292.09
Commit Genocide About -433401.86 (exact value not given)
-As for all the positive actions from the life of the person in the orientation video, I opted not to list them all but these are the highlights
Ate Vegan
Never Discussed Veganism Unprompted
Gave Out Full-Size Candy Bars At Halloween
Self-Monitored Potentially Nauseating Mouth Sounds While Chewing
Began to Compose Social Media Post About David Bowie Dying And Then Thought The World Doesn't Need To Hear My Thoughts on David Bowie
Researched West Indies Test Cricket Tournament Results to Facilitate Conversation with Father-In Law
-As someone who lives in Calgary, the story of Doug Forcett was my favourite joke of the episode (I'm very biased).
-"The bear has two mouths!"- overheard on the Bad Place audio.
-Example of how good everyone else in The Good Place is. "So then he said 'You can't give me both your kidneys. You'll die.' And I said 'but you will live, and I know we just met on this bus 10 minutes ago but you seem nice'".
-"We don't know what it is, how long it'll last or what caused it. What do we know Janet?" "We know where it happened: here".
-Eleanor's favourite "book" is Kendall Jenner's Instagram feed.
-"I have to say this neighbourhood you've built is tuly a masterpiece, the likes of which I've never seen, and I've been to Johnny Depp's private bird sanctuary".
-Some people think of their wedding day or favourite vacation spot to get the joy needed to fly. Eleanor thinks of people puking on roller coasters.
-"We could've literally been flying and all you wanted to do is talk about morals. You're like the worst parts of Superman!"
-Not a memorable moment but just a note that I'm planning to recap The Good Place throughout the season. Will I follow through on this? Hopefully.
Friday, 16 September 2016
Superstore Just Might Be The Office Successor We've Been Waiting For
My favourite TV show of all time is the American version of The Office. I've seen every episode multiple times, can rattle quotes and trivia off the top of my head and can talk about it for hours. Sure it may not be the best or the funniest or the most consistent show ever made, but it's my favourite, the show to which I judge all other shows, (or at least all other comedies) and I've missed it since it went off the air in 2013. Sure, there's been plenty of great comedies on TV since then but none of them (Except for Jane The Virgin, which is a lot more than just a straight-up comedy and Parks and Recreation, which was well into it's run when The Office ended so can't really be considered a successor) have made me feel the level of joy The Office gave me week in and week out. Over the course of it's first season though, new NBC comedy Superstore (which returns for it's second season Thursday Sept. 22nd) came incredibly close.
Superstore (created by Justin Spitzer who was a longtime writer for The Office) has a lot of similarities to The Office. It's a workplace comedy about a group of people trying to pass the time at their boring, monotonous job while their hopes and dreams go mostly unfulfilled. There's a well-meaning but ineffectual manager and an over-bearing zealous assistant manager who's essentially a female Dwight Schrute. At the heart of the show is a pair of people trying to make the best at a job they're wasting their talents on, while developing a friendship with a definite "Will They/Won't They" spark to it. There's also a varied, diverse group of supporting players rounding out the ensemble and an ever-expanding group of minor characters who can pop in for a quick laugh and pop out again. All this and more makes Superstore feel familiar, but the show feels avoids feeling like a tired retread thanks to good writing, some very well-drawn characters and excellent use of the show's setting.
The show's setting is vital to it's success. Cloud Nine, a Walmart-esque big box store where the show is set isn't the kind of place you see on TV very often but is a place ripe with storytelling and comedic possibilities, as Superstore demonstrates each and every episode. Secret shoppers, hapless customers, flu vaccines, wedding sales, shoplifters, corporate magazines eager to highlight diversity, pointless grunt work and more come up throughout the first season. Small interstitial vignettes of life throughout the store (such as children tearing up the make-up aisle or customers sleeping on the display couch or quickly groping a mannequin) help transition between scenes and bring the world of the show to life in hilarious detail, while adding to the idea that anything can happen here. The fact that this is a minimum wage job and Cloud Nine corporate is more concerned with the bottom line and appearing to care and listen to employee needs than actually caring or listening to employee needs is also ever present (a late season scene where a simple request call to employee services escalates dramatically with an off-hand mention of the word union is both hilarious and chilling), giving a dark edge to the bright surface of the show that pays off dividends as the season goes on. Few of the employees actually want to be at this dead-end retail job, but they don't have a better option, which is something the show understands and highlights.
The show is also expertly cast, with the actors bringing to life characters that in lesser hands could feels like simple stock types and together, sharing an easy-going chemistry that almost makes you want to work at a Cloud Nine, just so you could hang out with these people. Heading up the ensemble is Amy (America Ferrara), a long-time employee and shift manager who loves her family but regrets getting pregnant at 19 and having to put her dreams on hold to support them and Jonah (Ben Feldman), a fresh employee and business school drop-out who applied for the job on a whim and whose more privileged upbringing often sticks out among the other employees. The two develop a friendship/rivalry that feels lived-in and natural and while there's definite chemistry, Amy being married with an 11-year-old helps offset the relationship causing a natural slow-burn on the possibility of romance between the two. Amy and Jonah may be at the show's centre, but they don't overwhelm it, being surrounded by a group of characters who can just as easily take the lead when needed. Store manager Glenn (Mark McKinney) is an evangelical Christian (which is played for laughs while still treated seriously as a part of his character) who's clueless but kind-hearted, and who turns out to be much more frustrated with Cloud Nine and the way they treat their employees than he lets on under his cheery exterior. He's counterbalanced by Dina (Lauren Ash) who's rule-obsessed and strives for excellence, but also has a softer side which comes out in her love for the many birds she owns and her affection for Jonah. She's the broadest character, but Ash is great at finding the humanity behind her need for order and love of authority that keeps her from being a total caricature. Garrett (Colton Dunn), an easy-going, wheelchair-bound agent of chaos always looking for ways to avoid work, Mateo (Nico Santos), an ambitious, competitive employee hoping to rise to the top, and Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) a pregnant teen trying to get money to support her baby round out the cast, with all of the actors doing great work to bring dimension to their characters. There's also plenty of supporting players like Bo (Johnny Pemberton), Cheyenne's ridiculous but devoted rapper wannabe fiancé, elderly employee Mertle (Linda Porter) or creepy employee Sal (Sean Whalen) and an endless supply of customers to further flesh out Cloud Nine and make it feel like a real place.
Superstore is also a very funny, confident show and it uses both setting and character to create plenty of great, specific moments. When the store is forced to stay late to change the signs to a new colour, the new colour turns out to be essentially the same as the previous one ("The old signs were a pale, outdated colour called "Glossy Dolphin". The new signs are a bold, exciting colour called "Glossy Dolphin-B". Jonah's classically handsome looks and pretentious manner are routinely mocked ("He looks like the villain on the CW"). When an elderly customer dies on a display couch, Cheyenne and Nico compete for the right to take home the couch. When openly gay Mateo compliments Christian Glenn on how open minded he is, Glenn laments the view of Christians as intolerant then obliviously adds "you have no idea what it's liked to be stereotyped like that". Garrett has no problem taking full advantage of his wheelchair bound status to sell product during a sales contest with 100 dollars on the line ('"I wish I would've bought a Vitamix" was the first thing I said when I woke up from my coma'). The show's setting also allows for them to routinely have the kind of large-scale set-pieces The Office could only occasionally pull off (Their recent Olympic special features an Olympic tribute that quickly devolves into a chaos quite reminiscent of Dwight's fire drill from The Office's Superbowl episode). The previously mentioned interstitial scenes add to the comedy of the show and bring jokes to routine scene transitions. Of course, the comedy isn't perfect and plenty of the jokes are hit or miss but that's to be expected of a show in it's first season while it figures out what works. Superstore is figuring out what works pretty fast though and I expect it to soon be as good at bringing the comedy as it is at bringing the humanity.
Ultimately though, the humanity is the reason I've grown to love Superstore as fast as I have, just as it's the same reason I fell in love with The Office all those years ago. It's the reason I see Superstore as a promising successor to The Office, even if it still has a ways to go before even coming close to The Office in it's prime. See, as hilarious as The Office was, I loved it because it felt real. The characters felt real so it was easy to become invested in them, to root for them to succeed and to feel a little heartbroken when the world seemed to be against them. Superstore is the same way. After 12 episodes, I want to see these characters succeed and find a way so that they don't have to work at Cloud Nine anymore. Everyone feels real and that makes the emotional moments on the show all the more potent. The first season ends with almost the entire staff staging a walk-out in support of Glenn, who's been fired for defying corporate policy and finding a loophole to give Cheyenne a bit of paid maternity leave. It's a moment that feels earned and is as powerful as anything I've seen on TV this year. A moment that gets you both worried and excited to find out what's next for these characters.
Superstore's not a perfect show. It's not even really a great show yet, but it's a show that starts fine and keeps getting better, and if it can keep up it's momentum heading into the second season, it'll be a great show in no time. I strongly doubt it'll ever replace The Office as my favourite show of all time, but if it keeps carrying on it's spirit the way it does, it just might make me forget how much I miss it.
Superstore (created by Justin Spitzer who was a longtime writer for The Office) has a lot of similarities to The Office. It's a workplace comedy about a group of people trying to pass the time at their boring, monotonous job while their hopes and dreams go mostly unfulfilled. There's a well-meaning but ineffectual manager and an over-bearing zealous assistant manager who's essentially a female Dwight Schrute. At the heart of the show is a pair of people trying to make the best at a job they're wasting their talents on, while developing a friendship with a definite "Will They/Won't They" spark to it. There's also a varied, diverse group of supporting players rounding out the ensemble and an ever-expanding group of minor characters who can pop in for a quick laugh and pop out again. All this and more makes Superstore feel familiar, but the show feels avoids feeling like a tired retread thanks to good writing, some very well-drawn characters and excellent use of the show's setting.
The show's setting is vital to it's success. Cloud Nine, a Walmart-esque big box store where the show is set isn't the kind of place you see on TV very often but is a place ripe with storytelling and comedic possibilities, as Superstore demonstrates each and every episode. Secret shoppers, hapless customers, flu vaccines, wedding sales, shoplifters, corporate magazines eager to highlight diversity, pointless grunt work and more come up throughout the first season. Small interstitial vignettes of life throughout the store (such as children tearing up the make-up aisle or customers sleeping on the display couch or quickly groping a mannequin) help transition between scenes and bring the world of the show to life in hilarious detail, while adding to the idea that anything can happen here. The fact that this is a minimum wage job and Cloud Nine corporate is more concerned with the bottom line and appearing to care and listen to employee needs than actually caring or listening to employee needs is also ever present (a late season scene where a simple request call to employee services escalates dramatically with an off-hand mention of the word union is both hilarious and chilling), giving a dark edge to the bright surface of the show that pays off dividends as the season goes on. Few of the employees actually want to be at this dead-end retail job, but they don't have a better option, which is something the show understands and highlights.
The show is also expertly cast, with the actors bringing to life characters that in lesser hands could feels like simple stock types and together, sharing an easy-going chemistry that almost makes you want to work at a Cloud Nine, just so you could hang out with these people. Heading up the ensemble is Amy (America Ferrara), a long-time employee and shift manager who loves her family but regrets getting pregnant at 19 and having to put her dreams on hold to support them and Jonah (Ben Feldman), a fresh employee and business school drop-out who applied for the job on a whim and whose more privileged upbringing often sticks out among the other employees. The two develop a friendship/rivalry that feels lived-in and natural and while there's definite chemistry, Amy being married with an 11-year-old helps offset the relationship causing a natural slow-burn on the possibility of romance between the two. Amy and Jonah may be at the show's centre, but they don't overwhelm it, being surrounded by a group of characters who can just as easily take the lead when needed. Store manager Glenn (Mark McKinney) is an evangelical Christian (which is played for laughs while still treated seriously as a part of his character) who's clueless but kind-hearted, and who turns out to be much more frustrated with Cloud Nine and the way they treat their employees than he lets on under his cheery exterior. He's counterbalanced by Dina (Lauren Ash) who's rule-obsessed and strives for excellence, but also has a softer side which comes out in her love for the many birds she owns and her affection for Jonah. She's the broadest character, but Ash is great at finding the humanity behind her need for order and love of authority that keeps her from being a total caricature. Garrett (Colton Dunn), an easy-going, wheelchair-bound agent of chaos always looking for ways to avoid work, Mateo (Nico Santos), an ambitious, competitive employee hoping to rise to the top, and Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) a pregnant teen trying to get money to support her baby round out the cast, with all of the actors doing great work to bring dimension to their characters. There's also plenty of supporting players like Bo (Johnny Pemberton), Cheyenne's ridiculous but devoted rapper wannabe fiancé, elderly employee Mertle (Linda Porter) or creepy employee Sal (Sean Whalen) and an endless supply of customers to further flesh out Cloud Nine and make it feel like a real place.
Superstore is also a very funny, confident show and it uses both setting and character to create plenty of great, specific moments. When the store is forced to stay late to change the signs to a new colour, the new colour turns out to be essentially the same as the previous one ("The old signs were a pale, outdated colour called "Glossy Dolphin". The new signs are a bold, exciting colour called "Glossy Dolphin-B". Jonah's classically handsome looks and pretentious manner are routinely mocked ("He looks like the villain on the CW"). When an elderly customer dies on a display couch, Cheyenne and Nico compete for the right to take home the couch. When openly gay Mateo compliments Christian Glenn on how open minded he is, Glenn laments the view of Christians as intolerant then obliviously adds "you have no idea what it's liked to be stereotyped like that". Garrett has no problem taking full advantage of his wheelchair bound status to sell product during a sales contest with 100 dollars on the line ('"I wish I would've bought a Vitamix" was the first thing I said when I woke up from my coma'). The show's setting also allows for them to routinely have the kind of large-scale set-pieces The Office could only occasionally pull off (Their recent Olympic special features an Olympic tribute that quickly devolves into a chaos quite reminiscent of Dwight's fire drill from The Office's Superbowl episode). The previously mentioned interstitial scenes add to the comedy of the show and bring jokes to routine scene transitions. Of course, the comedy isn't perfect and plenty of the jokes are hit or miss but that's to be expected of a show in it's first season while it figures out what works. Superstore is figuring out what works pretty fast though and I expect it to soon be as good at bringing the comedy as it is at bringing the humanity.
Ultimately though, the humanity is the reason I've grown to love Superstore as fast as I have, just as it's the same reason I fell in love with The Office all those years ago. It's the reason I see Superstore as a promising successor to The Office, even if it still has a ways to go before even coming close to The Office in it's prime. See, as hilarious as The Office was, I loved it because it felt real. The characters felt real so it was easy to become invested in them, to root for them to succeed and to feel a little heartbroken when the world seemed to be against them. Superstore is the same way. After 12 episodes, I want to see these characters succeed and find a way so that they don't have to work at Cloud Nine anymore. Everyone feels real and that makes the emotional moments on the show all the more potent. The first season ends with almost the entire staff staging a walk-out in support of Glenn, who's been fired for defying corporate policy and finding a loophole to give Cheyenne a bit of paid maternity leave. It's a moment that feels earned and is as powerful as anything I've seen on TV this year. A moment that gets you both worried and excited to find out what's next for these characters.
Superstore's not a perfect show. It's not even really a great show yet, but it's a show that starts fine and keeps getting better, and if it can keep up it's momentum heading into the second season, it'll be a great show in no time. I strongly doubt it'll ever replace The Office as my favourite show of all time, but if it keeps carrying on it's spirit the way it does, it just might make me forget how much I miss it.
Friday, 1 April 2016
Why I (Mostly) Like The Way How I Met Your Mother Ended
Two years ago this week, after 9 seasons and 206 episodes How I Met Your Mother aired Last Forever, the two-part last episodes of the series and the end of the story they began telling way back in 2005. The show was a few years removed from it's peak, and the last couple of seasons had been fairly inconsistent (Setting the entirety of season 9 over the course of one weekend was a bold and interesting creative choice, but also one that led to a lot of filler and time-wasting), but there had been enough glimmers of the shows former greatness in the last season (particularly everything with Cristin Milioti playing the mother) to suggest they could stick the landing, even with a worrying bit of foreshadowing in one of the last episodes. And then the last episodes aired. And the internet lost it.
Serious spoilers for a 2-year-old ending from here on out, yo!
In case you've blocked out the details from your memory, let me quickly refresh you on what happened to make everyone so upset. Last Forever takes us from the day Ted met Tracy (The mother) at Barney and Robin's wedding and shows us what happened to the gang in the years that followed. We find out that Barney and Robin divorced three years in because Robin's job caused her to spend too much time on the road making Barney unhappy that he never got to see her. This causes Robin to push herself away from the gang, not being able to handle being around Barney or Ted, who she's starting to feel she should have ended up with. It also convinces Barney that he's not able to be in a committed relationship and pushes him back to his old ways, until he knocks up a girl (never seen or given a name beyond 31) and gets a daughter, who makes him love again and brings out his paternal side. Meanwhile, though their wedding is delayed by a sudden pregnancy and then put off through the years, Ted and Tracy finally wed in 2020 and Ted loves her with everything she has. And then in 2024, she gets sick and dies. That's when 2030 Ted finally shows us the first meeting of him and Tracy in 2013 and ends his story. At which point his daughter tells him it's obvious the reason he told them this long story is because he wants to ask out Robin and wants to see if they're OK with it. Ted denies it but they tell him that after 6 years, it's time to move on so he shows up at Robin's with the blue french horn he stole so many years ago, ready to start again. End of show.
So yeah.
Obviously this was upsetting to many people. After 9 seasons, this was how they ended the show? With the mother dying and Ted and Robin back together? Really? And after a season where we got to spend time with the mother and fell in love with her ourselves, thanks to the superb performance of Cristin Milioti? And that stuff with the kids was filmed during season 2 so clearly this had been the plan all along. Never mind that the ending recontextualizes what the entire show was about. It was a lot to take and for the most part, people rejected the ending hard.
But here's the thing. I have watched Last Forever several times now and I like the ending. Is it perfect? No, and I'm going to talk about my issues with the ending very quick. But I think it's a daring ending and a beautiful one. I fully understand why people hate it so much and why most people aren't going to give it a second chance, but I'm not one of those people. So if you'll let me, let's go through that ending a bit closer.
What Doesn't Work About The Ending
For starters, let's look at Barney's storyline for a minute. Mainly the part where he gets a girl pregnant. This is something that happens at the end of his attempt at a perfect month (sleeping with 31 women in 31 days). It's a long-delayed consequence to his years of sleeping around and treating women like objects. The problem is the woman he sleeps with is basically an object. We never meet her. We never learn her actual name or her feelings about this pregnancy or Barney or anything. Her only purpose is to give Barney Ellie, the daughter he falls immediately in love with that causes him to stop hitting on young girls and start encouraging them to make better life choices. And it's weird. The show had always (well usually) been critical of Barney dehumanizing women as anonymous conquests and it was leaving the mother of his child, an anonymous conquest. Obviously Barney's arc wasn't the main focus of the episode, but this is still something that doesn't sit quite right with me.
That's a minor thing though. Let's get to my main issue with the ending: the scene with Ted's kids. In the early days of the show, the kids were a somewhat active part, commenting on the story from time to time as Ted told it. But as the show kept going and the kids started ageing, they stopped contributing to the action and became silent observers, through the magic of stock footage. But not before they shot one last scene to be held for the last episode. This scene was written and filmed back during season 2, where more people would have been onboard with Ted and Robin ending up together. It was also when the tone of the show was a lot lighter than the more emotional tone they would flirt with in the later seasons and when they had no idea the show would last 9 years or that they would spend much more time with Tracy than they had originally planned. Lyndsy Fonseca and David Henrie also weren't great actors back then so their delivery is kind of off. Also about a minute into the scene, the laugh track kicks in for some reason, lending the whole affair of Ted deciding to move on a oddly jovial feel. As a result, the scene is broad and off-putting, causing massive tonal whiplash between a scene crucial to the end of the series and what had come right before that makes it seem wildly out of place.
This combines with another misstep, which is us jumping from finding out Tracy got sick to the meeting to 2030 with no look at the 6 years during that time of Ted mourning the lost of his great love. To the characters, the mother has been dead for 6 years so of course it's OK for Ted to move on. But for us, the mother has been dead for about a minute and a half and before we as an audience can process it, now Ted is running off to get Robin. This causes people to get the wrong idea about the ending. It makes Tracy seem like a disposable figure in Ted's life, there to give him the children that Robin never would and keep him busy while Robin was getting the success Ted might have held her back from, and then die, giving them their chance to be together. If there had been even a glimpse of a Ted contemplating his lost, or if that damn kids scene had been shot differently to better convey the enormity of Ted's decision, maybe the last scene would've played a little better. It's a shame. Because that last scene is beautiful.
Why I Like The Ending
Look, after 9 years of spending time with these characters, it would have been easy for Craig Thomas and Carter Bays to let their characters just sail off into the sunset and have a final episode that was purely a happy ending. But the world the show was in was always just a heightened version of our world and in our world, life seldom has purely happy endings. People grow apart. Marriages don't always work out. People get sick. The show had tackled less happy subject matter before in things like Marshall's dad dying or Robin learning she was infertile. The idea that the gang might drift apart as the years went by had come up as early as season 4 and had been coming up more and more often as the show got older. A purely happy, purely fan-service ending might have worked, but it also would have been disingenuous to what the show was. So yes, it's difficult and sad to watch Barney and Robin divorce and Barney regress to his old ways because he's convinced he can't change. It's hard seeing the gang drift apart over the years as life gets in the way. And it's terrible that Tracy dies. But all that makes for a finale that's ambitious and challenging and an interesting subversion of a lot of the shows themes (Though there is an alternate cut of the finale available on the season 9 DVD where Tracy doesn't die that works just as well, so I'm not going to say that Tracy had to die for the finale to be interesting). And the various trials the characters go through in the finales do lead to happy endings for essentially all the characters, which are only made better through the suffering they had to go to to get there. Marshall getting that judge call after years toiling at a terrible job or Barney meeting his daughter are powerful moments because of everything they went through.
Another thing the episode does incredibly well that gets overlooked because of what immediately preceded and followed the scene is the meeting of Ted and Tracy. It's a big scene, and the entire series had been building up to it. And as the years had gone on, there was a lot of pressure on this scene to be significant. Especially because Ted spends a good part of season 8, and 9 fighting his feelings for Robin. And season 9 took place over the course of a weekend, so in the shows timeline, Ted is in love with another woman hours before meeting his future wife and about to move to Chicago to get away from those feelings. So the connection between Ted and Tracy had to be strong enough that he would cancel his plans to move so he could see this girl again. And the scene delivers big-time. Don't believe that? Watch it again.
It's a beautiful scene, one of the best the show would ever do, and the chemistry between Radnor and Milioti is immediate. We watch them instantly connect, see them use their connection to Tracy's former roommate Cindy to establish a sense of familiarity, watch them banter about the fabled yellow umbrella and see that lead them to see they were more connected than they previously thought. It pays off two big things we knew about the mother (She was in the Econ 305 class Ted accidentally taught and she left her yellow umbrella in a club on St. Patricks Day where Ted also was) and weaves them together beautifully and by the end of the scene, you can see they were in love from the start. Just try not to get chills as they say "hi" to each other again, oblivious to the fact that the train they were waiting for is passing them by. It's a stunning sequence whether used as the ending to the show (as it is in the alternate ending I recommend you watch if you hated the official one) or as only an ending to the story Ted has been telling his kids. An affirmation that no matter where Ted's life goes from there, he will always love that woman with the yellow umbrella. She was the one.
The thing is though, there's no such thing as "the one". You can have more than one true love. And if you lose your love, it's possible to start again. It doesn't diminish the love you had or mean you loved them any less. It just means you're keeping on living. That's the ultimate message of what How I Met Your Mother is trying to say in that ending. It's a subversion of most romantic comedies and a lot of what the show had been seemingly trying to say about love up to that point. It's something they lay the groundwork for in How Your Mother Met Me, a Tracy spotlight episode that shows her attempting to move on from her great love after he tragically died and deciding she was ready to move on hours before she met Ted. Now while on some level Tracy would always love Max (her dead boyfriend), that doesn't mean she didn't love Ted just as much. Ted wasn't a consolation prize in place of what she really wanted. And Tracy wasn't a consolation prize either. Relationships are complex and this was something the show made an admirable (if, admittedly flawed) effort to tackle.
Which brings us to the Robin of it all. As I mentioned above, the ending recontextualizes what the entire show had been about. It was no longer just a story about Ted telling his kids how he met their mother. Or, more accurately, Ted telling his kids about the long journey he had to take to be ready to meet their mother. It was now a story about a man who had lost one of the loves of his life, but was starting to realize the one who got away might be ready to start again. It was about a man telling his kids all the things he went through to meet their mother, trying to get them to understand and get their permission to give himself permission to move on. And if the second-to-last scene of the show fails to convey all that, the last scene gets it perfectly.
Underscored to Heaven by The Walkmen, we see Robin enter an apartment that's not too different from her apartment at the beginning of the series. Her door is buzzing, and with future technology on the fritz she has no choice to stick her head out the window to see who it is. And she sees Ted, standing there with the Blue French Horn, that's been a symbol of their relationship for the run of the show. It's a near-exact mirror of a scene from the show's pilot, but it's different now. They've been through so much in their lives and are different people from the ones who met all those years ago. And it all comes through in the facial expressions on both their faces without a single word being uttered once Robin looks out that window. You can see her confusion turn to bewilderment turn to joy as Ted smiles on. And the steps the show took to get to this scene got a bit muddled at the end, but if you can find it in you to get past that clumsiness, what you see is an incredibly effective scene that feels like the culmination of everything the show has been building towards. Life isn't simple. There is no such thing as a perfect love story. But you can start again if you just try. It's an ending, but it's also a beginning and it's a beginning that resonates because it suggests there's always hope. And honestly, long after all the shows I currently watch and many of the shows I will watch end, I'm probably not going to remember that scene with Ted's kids, but I will remember that final shot of Ted holding up that Blue French Horn, with all the questions and promise it implies, and I'm going to smile because the hope of that ending is a powerful thing.
Serious spoilers for a 2-year-old ending from here on out, yo!
In case you've blocked out the details from your memory, let me quickly refresh you on what happened to make everyone so upset. Last Forever takes us from the day Ted met Tracy (The mother) at Barney and Robin's wedding and shows us what happened to the gang in the years that followed. We find out that Barney and Robin divorced three years in because Robin's job caused her to spend too much time on the road making Barney unhappy that he never got to see her. This causes Robin to push herself away from the gang, not being able to handle being around Barney or Ted, who she's starting to feel she should have ended up with. It also convinces Barney that he's not able to be in a committed relationship and pushes him back to his old ways, until he knocks up a girl (never seen or given a name beyond 31) and gets a daughter, who makes him love again and brings out his paternal side. Meanwhile, though their wedding is delayed by a sudden pregnancy and then put off through the years, Ted and Tracy finally wed in 2020 and Ted loves her with everything she has. And then in 2024, she gets sick and dies. That's when 2030 Ted finally shows us the first meeting of him and Tracy in 2013 and ends his story. At which point his daughter tells him it's obvious the reason he told them this long story is because he wants to ask out Robin and wants to see if they're OK with it. Ted denies it but they tell him that after 6 years, it's time to move on so he shows up at Robin's with the blue french horn he stole so many years ago, ready to start again. End of show.
So yeah.
Obviously this was upsetting to many people. After 9 seasons, this was how they ended the show? With the mother dying and Ted and Robin back together? Really? And after a season where we got to spend time with the mother and fell in love with her ourselves, thanks to the superb performance of Cristin Milioti? And that stuff with the kids was filmed during season 2 so clearly this had been the plan all along. Never mind that the ending recontextualizes what the entire show was about. It was a lot to take and for the most part, people rejected the ending hard.
But here's the thing. I have watched Last Forever several times now and I like the ending. Is it perfect? No, and I'm going to talk about my issues with the ending very quick. But I think it's a daring ending and a beautiful one. I fully understand why people hate it so much and why most people aren't going to give it a second chance, but I'm not one of those people. So if you'll let me, let's go through that ending a bit closer.
What Doesn't Work About The Ending
For starters, let's look at Barney's storyline for a minute. Mainly the part where he gets a girl pregnant. This is something that happens at the end of his attempt at a perfect month (sleeping with 31 women in 31 days). It's a long-delayed consequence to his years of sleeping around and treating women like objects. The problem is the woman he sleeps with is basically an object. We never meet her. We never learn her actual name or her feelings about this pregnancy or Barney or anything. Her only purpose is to give Barney Ellie, the daughter he falls immediately in love with that causes him to stop hitting on young girls and start encouraging them to make better life choices. And it's weird. The show had always (well usually) been critical of Barney dehumanizing women as anonymous conquests and it was leaving the mother of his child, an anonymous conquest. Obviously Barney's arc wasn't the main focus of the episode, but this is still something that doesn't sit quite right with me.
That's a minor thing though. Let's get to my main issue with the ending: the scene with Ted's kids. In the early days of the show, the kids were a somewhat active part, commenting on the story from time to time as Ted told it. But as the show kept going and the kids started ageing, they stopped contributing to the action and became silent observers, through the magic of stock footage. But not before they shot one last scene to be held for the last episode. This scene was written and filmed back during season 2, where more people would have been onboard with Ted and Robin ending up together. It was also when the tone of the show was a lot lighter than the more emotional tone they would flirt with in the later seasons and when they had no idea the show would last 9 years or that they would spend much more time with Tracy than they had originally planned. Lyndsy Fonseca and David Henrie also weren't great actors back then so their delivery is kind of off. Also about a minute into the scene, the laugh track kicks in for some reason, lending the whole affair of Ted deciding to move on a oddly jovial feel. As a result, the scene is broad and off-putting, causing massive tonal whiplash between a scene crucial to the end of the series and what had come right before that makes it seem wildly out of place.
This combines with another misstep, which is us jumping from finding out Tracy got sick to the meeting to 2030 with no look at the 6 years during that time of Ted mourning the lost of his great love. To the characters, the mother has been dead for 6 years so of course it's OK for Ted to move on. But for us, the mother has been dead for about a minute and a half and before we as an audience can process it, now Ted is running off to get Robin. This causes people to get the wrong idea about the ending. It makes Tracy seem like a disposable figure in Ted's life, there to give him the children that Robin never would and keep him busy while Robin was getting the success Ted might have held her back from, and then die, giving them their chance to be together. If there had been even a glimpse of a Ted contemplating his lost, or if that damn kids scene had been shot differently to better convey the enormity of Ted's decision, maybe the last scene would've played a little better. It's a shame. Because that last scene is beautiful.
Why I Like The Ending
Look, after 9 years of spending time with these characters, it would have been easy for Craig Thomas and Carter Bays to let their characters just sail off into the sunset and have a final episode that was purely a happy ending. But the world the show was in was always just a heightened version of our world and in our world, life seldom has purely happy endings. People grow apart. Marriages don't always work out. People get sick. The show had tackled less happy subject matter before in things like Marshall's dad dying or Robin learning she was infertile. The idea that the gang might drift apart as the years went by had come up as early as season 4 and had been coming up more and more often as the show got older. A purely happy, purely fan-service ending might have worked, but it also would have been disingenuous to what the show was. So yes, it's difficult and sad to watch Barney and Robin divorce and Barney regress to his old ways because he's convinced he can't change. It's hard seeing the gang drift apart over the years as life gets in the way. And it's terrible that Tracy dies. But all that makes for a finale that's ambitious and challenging and an interesting subversion of a lot of the shows themes (Though there is an alternate cut of the finale available on the season 9 DVD where Tracy doesn't die that works just as well, so I'm not going to say that Tracy had to die for the finale to be interesting). And the various trials the characters go through in the finales do lead to happy endings for essentially all the characters, which are only made better through the suffering they had to go to to get there. Marshall getting that judge call after years toiling at a terrible job or Barney meeting his daughter are powerful moments because of everything they went through.
Another thing the episode does incredibly well that gets overlooked because of what immediately preceded and followed the scene is the meeting of Ted and Tracy. It's a big scene, and the entire series had been building up to it. And as the years had gone on, there was a lot of pressure on this scene to be significant. Especially because Ted spends a good part of season 8, and 9 fighting his feelings for Robin. And season 9 took place over the course of a weekend, so in the shows timeline, Ted is in love with another woman hours before meeting his future wife and about to move to Chicago to get away from those feelings. So the connection between Ted and Tracy had to be strong enough that he would cancel his plans to move so he could see this girl again. And the scene delivers big-time. Don't believe that? Watch it again.
It's a beautiful scene, one of the best the show would ever do, and the chemistry between Radnor and Milioti is immediate. We watch them instantly connect, see them use their connection to Tracy's former roommate Cindy to establish a sense of familiarity, watch them banter about the fabled yellow umbrella and see that lead them to see they were more connected than they previously thought. It pays off two big things we knew about the mother (She was in the Econ 305 class Ted accidentally taught and she left her yellow umbrella in a club on St. Patricks Day where Ted also was) and weaves them together beautifully and by the end of the scene, you can see they were in love from the start. Just try not to get chills as they say "hi" to each other again, oblivious to the fact that the train they were waiting for is passing them by. It's a stunning sequence whether used as the ending to the show (as it is in the alternate ending I recommend you watch if you hated the official one) or as only an ending to the story Ted has been telling his kids. An affirmation that no matter where Ted's life goes from there, he will always love that woman with the yellow umbrella. She was the one.
The thing is though, there's no such thing as "the one". You can have more than one true love. And if you lose your love, it's possible to start again. It doesn't diminish the love you had or mean you loved them any less. It just means you're keeping on living. That's the ultimate message of what How I Met Your Mother is trying to say in that ending. It's a subversion of most romantic comedies and a lot of what the show had been seemingly trying to say about love up to that point. It's something they lay the groundwork for in How Your Mother Met Me, a Tracy spotlight episode that shows her attempting to move on from her great love after he tragically died and deciding she was ready to move on hours before she met Ted. Now while on some level Tracy would always love Max (her dead boyfriend), that doesn't mean she didn't love Ted just as much. Ted wasn't a consolation prize in place of what she really wanted. And Tracy wasn't a consolation prize either. Relationships are complex and this was something the show made an admirable (if, admittedly flawed) effort to tackle.
Underscored to Heaven by The Walkmen, we see Robin enter an apartment that's not too different from her apartment at the beginning of the series. Her door is buzzing, and with future technology on the fritz she has no choice to stick her head out the window to see who it is. And she sees Ted, standing there with the Blue French Horn, that's been a symbol of their relationship for the run of the show. It's a near-exact mirror of a scene from the show's pilot, but it's different now. They've been through so much in their lives and are different people from the ones who met all those years ago. And it all comes through in the facial expressions on both their faces without a single word being uttered once Robin looks out that window. You can see her confusion turn to bewilderment turn to joy as Ted smiles on. And the steps the show took to get to this scene got a bit muddled at the end, but if you can find it in you to get past that clumsiness, what you see is an incredibly effective scene that feels like the culmination of everything the show has been building towards. Life isn't simple. There is no such thing as a perfect love story. But you can start again if you just try. It's an ending, but it's also a beginning and it's a beginning that resonates because it suggests there's always hope. And honestly, long after all the shows I currently watch and many of the shows I will watch end, I'm probably not going to remember that scene with Ted's kids, but I will remember that final shot of Ted holding up that Blue French Horn, with all the questions and promise it implies, and I'm going to smile because the hope of that ending is a powerful thing.
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| Remember, Remember, All We Fight For |
Monday, 14 March 2016
A Man Seeking Woman Episode Took Down "Nice Guys". It Was Awesome.
In our culture, there's the archetype of the Nice Guy. A guy who's kind and helpful and supportive and reliable. He's kind of boring but still an ideal and there just doesn't seem to be any of his kind around anymore. Then there's the men who fancy themselves to be the "Nice Guys". The guys who try to get the girl by being there for them and being their friend and being nice. The guys who grumble when the girls aren't interested in them and complain that "girls just don't want nice guys", as if the girl owes them for being nice. Their niceness has expectations and strings attached and completely ignores that maybe the girl they're after has a right to choose whoever she wants. It's the dark side of being the "nice guy" and something that was explored to great effect in Cactus, an episode of Man Seeking Woman that aired a couple weeks back.
Back Up. What's Man Seeking Woman?
Man Seeking Woman is a half-hour comedy on FXX (FX's comedy-centric station) currently on it's second season. If you're in Canada like me, you can find season 1 on Shomi. Created by Simon Rich and starring Jay Baruchel, it's an incredibly surrealist show about Josh Greenberg (Baruchel), a 20-something guy going through life trying to get by and looking for love, along with his womanizing best bro Mike (Eric Andre), and his sister Liz. Each episode contains a series of semi-connected sketches of a regular dating or life situation (Your ex is dating the worst person in the world but no one sees it, going to a destination wedding in a bad locale, spending time with your S.O.'s closest friends when you don't know them that well), and blows them up to absurdist extremes (The ex is dating an elderly Hitler, the wedding is literally in Hell, Josh's girlfriend and his friends lived through a slasher movie and keep going back to the cabin where the undead lumberjack is waiting). These heightened situations are presented as actually happening and are played totally straight by everyone involved, as if Japanese Penis monsters and war counsels on how to send a girl the perfect text were everyday things. Loosely serialized narratives run throughout the season (season 1 had Josh trying to get over or get back with his ex, while season 2 has him fall for Rosa (Rosa Salazar), a girl at his work), but the episodes essentially stand alone. It's not a perfect show by any means. The nature of it means if something doesn't work or you don't like a particular idea, you're stuck with it for 5 to 7 minutes until the next thing. Putting it all through Josh's worldview also means that sometimes the woman characters aren't well-defined beyond objects of Josh's desire (Though the show has been taking more steps to correct this as it's gone on and will shake things up from time to time with a "Woman Seeking Man" episode that follows Liz or Rosa and shows their perspective). But when the show works, it really, really works and Cactus was a highlight of a season that hit a lot more times than it missed.
So What Went Down?
Cactus kicks off with Josh bringing Rosa a coffee with extra soy (which she likes) and discovering she has broken up with her longtime boyfriend (who was literally Jesus in the complete opposite of the Hitler scenario). Josh comforts her, while trying to hide the fact that his body is trying to dance for joy. He has liked her for a while now and finally has his chance to make a move. He reassure his sister they are soulmates "Rosa loves coffee. I love getting her coffee. Rosa loves Juno Diaz. I, for a long time, have really wanted to read something by him or her". He goes onto say how he knows Rosa isn't "flashy like the Maxim Magazine type that most guys are into" but that's kind of what he loves about her. It's like he's "the only one who can see how special she is". It's a sentiment straight out of a terrible Rom-Com and it immediately gets debunked when he runs into a massive line of guys waiting to ask her out, all of whom are "the only one who can see how special she is". Josh might love Rosa, but he's not the only one and their connection wasn't unique. Except for one thing. Josh is able to bypass the line by informing the bouncer that he's "a friend". After this is vetted by security, he's allowed through where he uses his status as her friend to offer to help her move out of her ex-boyfriend's house.
So he helps her move, despite not really being that good at it and getting poked many times by Rosa's cactus (both the episodes title and a metaphor for all Josh is doing for a chance with Rosa). They bond a bit over their shared love of Must Love Dogs, which coincidentally comes on the television as Josh is about to leave (though neither one really wants him to.). So they sit to just watch the first bit. A while in though, they're still watching and getting very close. That's when the movie is pre-empted for a news report announcing an asteroid is going to wipe out the earth in 7 minutes and everyone needs to stay where they are and make the most of their time. Josh hems and haws, even as the newscasters start making out and Rosa seems to be giving every indication she wants Josh to make a move. So as the asteroid barrels toward earth he goes to kiss her. And then she turns him down. It's not a horrible rejection. She apologizes for giving him that impression. She tells him he's so great but she wants to be his friend so bad (which is the highest level of intimacy). It's not the end of the world (literally as the asteroid gets destroyed at the last minute). But it's still a rejection and now Josh is left to his own self-pity to deal with it.
This is when nice guy syndrome kicks in and the episode goes from fine to something I haven't been able to stop thinking about weeks after air. Josh vents to his friend Mike about how not fair this is. He put in the man hours, got her coffee, listened to her relationship problems, and helped her move. What more does she want? He concludes that girls just don't want to date nice guys and wishes there was a law that would make girls date the guy who's nicest to them. This is an obviously terrible idea that would completely ignore and reject the girl's feelings and ability to make her own decision but it sticks in Josh's head and he goes off to State supreme court to plead his case to a group of judges. The judges (nearly all of whom are men) agree with Josh. It seems reasonable and the girl would get something out of it: they'd get to date a nice guy. The one dissenter is a female judge, but her comments about how absurd this all is and how the law doesn't work like this keep on getting condescendingly dismissed and ignored with a "That's a good point, Louise". The "nice law" is passed and from now "if a guy is really, really nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". A victory has been won for superficially nice guys who think they should be rewarded for basic human decency everywhere. Josh walks out into a world where men can enter a relationship on the flimsiest of pretences and it's beautiful. For men anyway.
Then things take a turn. Josh is let into his apartment building by a homeless man, who he thanks while he attempts to reach Rosa. The homeless man (Kevin Mcdonald) follows Josh to tell him he's welcome and get confirmation that what he did was "very nice". Then he follows the law and unzips his pants. After all, "if a guy's nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". Josh tries to explain to the homeless man whose name is Chainsaw that's he's gotten the law confused. Josh made the law because there was a girl named Rosa who he was very nice to who he really liked. Chainsaw counters that he was very nice to Josh and he really likes Josh. So Josh tells Chainsaw that he seems nice but he thinks they'd be better off as "just friends". It's then Josh gets it. Just because he was nice to Rosa doesn't mean she has to sleep with him. She can sleep with or not sleep with whomever she wants and Josh just has to live with it. Josh might be a nice guy most of the time, but he hasn't been a very empathetic one. It's taken him being put on the other side of his own law for him to get it. Chainsaw thinks he's really learned something, as do the police. Of course that doesn't mean Josh gets to escape the consequences of his actions. Repealing a law is a lengthy process so until it's official, Josh resigns himself to dating Chainsaw.
By the time this happens, Josh and Chainsaw have settled into an odd kind of domestic bliss, but Josh takes the first out he gets (Though he agrees to attend the wedding they've already RSVP'd to as friends.). And it's given him enough time to be friends with Rosa again. Actual friends this time with no strings or expectations attached. He probably isn't completely over Rosa (the episodes end has sparks fly between her and Mike, which will cause issues with Josh for the rest of the season) but he's done trying to control her feelings. He's seeing her as an actual person for once. He still has a lot of growing to do as a person, but this is a nice start.
Back Up. What's Man Seeking Woman?
Man Seeking Woman is a half-hour comedy on FXX (FX's comedy-centric station) currently on it's second season. If you're in Canada like me, you can find season 1 on Shomi. Created by Simon Rich and starring Jay Baruchel, it's an incredibly surrealist show about Josh Greenberg (Baruchel), a 20-something guy going through life trying to get by and looking for love, along with his womanizing best bro Mike (Eric Andre), and his sister Liz. Each episode contains a series of semi-connected sketches of a regular dating or life situation (Your ex is dating the worst person in the world but no one sees it, going to a destination wedding in a bad locale, spending time with your S.O.'s closest friends when you don't know them that well), and blows them up to absurdist extremes (The ex is dating an elderly Hitler, the wedding is literally in Hell, Josh's girlfriend and his friends lived through a slasher movie and keep going back to the cabin where the undead lumberjack is waiting). These heightened situations are presented as actually happening and are played totally straight by everyone involved, as if Japanese Penis monsters and war counsels on how to send a girl the perfect text were everyday things. Loosely serialized narratives run throughout the season (season 1 had Josh trying to get over or get back with his ex, while season 2 has him fall for Rosa (Rosa Salazar), a girl at his work), but the episodes essentially stand alone. It's not a perfect show by any means. The nature of it means if something doesn't work or you don't like a particular idea, you're stuck with it for 5 to 7 minutes until the next thing. Putting it all through Josh's worldview also means that sometimes the woman characters aren't well-defined beyond objects of Josh's desire (Though the show has been taking more steps to correct this as it's gone on and will shake things up from time to time with a "Woman Seeking Man" episode that follows Liz or Rosa and shows their perspective). But when the show works, it really, really works and Cactus was a highlight of a season that hit a lot more times than it missed.
So What Went Down?
Cactus kicks off with Josh bringing Rosa a coffee with extra soy (which she likes) and discovering she has broken up with her longtime boyfriend (who was literally Jesus in the complete opposite of the Hitler scenario). Josh comforts her, while trying to hide the fact that his body is trying to dance for joy. He has liked her for a while now and finally has his chance to make a move. He reassure his sister they are soulmates "Rosa loves coffee. I love getting her coffee. Rosa loves Juno Diaz. I, for a long time, have really wanted to read something by him or her". He goes onto say how he knows Rosa isn't "flashy like the Maxim Magazine type that most guys are into" but that's kind of what he loves about her. It's like he's "the only one who can see how special she is". It's a sentiment straight out of a terrible Rom-Com and it immediately gets debunked when he runs into a massive line of guys waiting to ask her out, all of whom are "the only one who can see how special she is". Josh might love Rosa, but he's not the only one and their connection wasn't unique. Except for one thing. Josh is able to bypass the line by informing the bouncer that he's "a friend". After this is vetted by security, he's allowed through where he uses his status as her friend to offer to help her move out of her ex-boyfriend's house.
So he helps her move, despite not really being that good at it and getting poked many times by Rosa's cactus (both the episodes title and a metaphor for all Josh is doing for a chance with Rosa). They bond a bit over their shared love of Must Love Dogs, which coincidentally comes on the television as Josh is about to leave (though neither one really wants him to.). So they sit to just watch the first bit. A while in though, they're still watching and getting very close. That's when the movie is pre-empted for a news report announcing an asteroid is going to wipe out the earth in 7 minutes and everyone needs to stay where they are and make the most of their time. Josh hems and haws, even as the newscasters start making out and Rosa seems to be giving every indication she wants Josh to make a move. So as the asteroid barrels toward earth he goes to kiss her. And then she turns him down. It's not a horrible rejection. She apologizes for giving him that impression. She tells him he's so great but she wants to be his friend so bad (which is the highest level of intimacy). It's not the end of the world (literally as the asteroid gets destroyed at the last minute). But it's still a rejection and now Josh is left to his own self-pity to deal with it.
This is when nice guy syndrome kicks in and the episode goes from fine to something I haven't been able to stop thinking about weeks after air. Josh vents to his friend Mike about how not fair this is. He put in the man hours, got her coffee, listened to her relationship problems, and helped her move. What more does she want? He concludes that girls just don't want to date nice guys and wishes there was a law that would make girls date the guy who's nicest to them. This is an obviously terrible idea that would completely ignore and reject the girl's feelings and ability to make her own decision but it sticks in Josh's head and he goes off to State supreme court to plead his case to a group of judges. The judges (nearly all of whom are men) agree with Josh. It seems reasonable and the girl would get something out of it: they'd get to date a nice guy. The one dissenter is a female judge, but her comments about how absurd this all is and how the law doesn't work like this keep on getting condescendingly dismissed and ignored with a "That's a good point, Louise". The "nice law" is passed and from now "if a guy is really, really nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". A victory has been won for superficially nice guys who think they should be rewarded for basic human decency everywhere. Josh walks out into a world where men can enter a relationship on the flimsiest of pretences and it's beautiful. For men anyway.
Then things take a turn. Josh is let into his apartment building by a homeless man, who he thanks while he attempts to reach Rosa. The homeless man (Kevin Mcdonald) follows Josh to tell him he's welcome and get confirmation that what he did was "very nice". Then he follows the law and unzips his pants. After all, "if a guy's nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". Josh tries to explain to the homeless man whose name is Chainsaw that's he's gotten the law confused. Josh made the law because there was a girl named Rosa who he was very nice to who he really liked. Chainsaw counters that he was very nice to Josh and he really likes Josh. So Josh tells Chainsaw that he seems nice but he thinks they'd be better off as "just friends". It's then Josh gets it. Just because he was nice to Rosa doesn't mean she has to sleep with him. She can sleep with or not sleep with whomever she wants and Josh just has to live with it. Josh might be a nice guy most of the time, but he hasn't been a very empathetic one. It's taken him being put on the other side of his own law for him to get it. Chainsaw thinks he's really learned something, as do the police. Of course that doesn't mean Josh gets to escape the consequences of his actions. Repealing a law is a lengthy process so until it's official, Josh resigns himself to dating Chainsaw.
By the time this happens, Josh and Chainsaw have settled into an odd kind of domestic bliss, but Josh takes the first out he gets (Though he agrees to attend the wedding they've already RSVP'd to as friends.). And it's given him enough time to be friends with Rosa again. Actual friends this time with no strings or expectations attached. He probably isn't completely over Rosa (the episodes end has sparks fly between her and Mike, which will cause issues with Josh for the rest of the season) but he's done trying to control her feelings. He's seeing her as an actual person for once. He still has a lot of growing to do as a person, but this is a nice start.
Monday, 7 March 2016
You Should Really Watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Yo!
Some shows are easy to describe. A tight-knit group of friends go through life together. A mock documentary captures day-to-day life of workers in an office and their immature boss. Law enforcement of some kind stops criminals of some kind. A group of people crash on a mysterious island where they wind up in the ultimate battle of good and evil (Ok, Lost is a bit more complicated than that). Other shows defy that kind of simple description and make it harder to pin down why they're so appealing. Like The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a musical comedy in the middle of it's first (and hopefully not last) season which is one of my favourite shows currently airing. It's possible to sum up the premise in a sentence but there's so much more to it than that.
So What Is It About? And That Title's Supposed To Be Ironic, Right?
Yes, the title's ironic. Even the theme song points out it's a "sexist term". That theme song (embedded above) probably does the best job of summing up the premise, while also showing off a bit of the show's tongue-in-cheek tone, female perspective, and musical ambitions, but I'll give it a shot. Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom, who also co-created the show) is a hardworking New York lawyer who is very accomplished, but very miserable and depressed. One day she runs into Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), her one-time boyfriend from summer camp 10 years ago, which was maybe the last time she was truly happy. She learns he's about to move back from New York to his hometown of West Covina, California but he tells her to hit him up if she's ever in SoCal. Following this encounter, she impulsively quits her job, moves to West Covina, and gets a new job at a small, local law firm. But she didn't move there for Josh, as she repeatedly attests in West Covina, the first of many musical numbers on the show.
From this starting point, a lot of things happen. Rebecca befriends Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), a paralegal at her firm who becomes Rebecca's confidante, champion, and enabler in her pursuit of Josh (not that Rebecca will admit a pursuit), living vicariously through Rebecca to avoid confronting how dissatisfying her home life has become. She connects with Josh and they become friends, despite the disapproval of Josh's long time girlfriend Valencia (Gabrielle Ruiz). Inserting herself into Josh's life also leads her to meet and bond with Josh's best friend Greg (Santino Fontana), an embittered bartender who can't help but fall for Rebecca, even as he becomes increasingly wary of her and her intentions. Also pulled into Rebecca's orbit are Darryl (Pete Gardner), her affable boss who is going through a divorce, and Heather (Vella Lovell), her cool, young, apathetic neighbour who can't help but be fascinated by Rebecca and her erratic behaviour.
So Why Do You Like This Show So Much?
Well for starters, it's surprisingly deep and complex. A musical comedy about a woman who follows her old ex-boyfriend across the country in an attempt to be happy doesn't seem like a sustainable premise for a ongoing TV show beyond a few episodes but the show makes it work by not being afraid to explore the full implications of that premise. What Rebecca's doing isn't healthy human behaviour and the show knows it, and isn't afraid to have people (including Dr. Phil at one point in a surprisingly great guest spot) call her on it, but it also doesn't judge her and has total empathy for why she's the way she is and why she does the things she does. Rebecca isn't just some wacky one-dimensional cartoon person. She has real issues in her past thanks to her overbearing, overcritical mother and her father walking out on her when she was young. She struggles with depression (continuing a nice trend right now of interesting and nuanced portrayals of depression on television) and self-hatred, among other things and you can see why a remembrance from a time when she was happy might cause her to take such drastic action.
The supporting characters also aren't just props solely around to bolster Rebecca's story. They all have real depth (even Valencia eventually) and lives of their own. Greg wants to go back to school but feels obliged to take care of his sick father. Paula has her marriage problems and is tempted by one of the firm's clients. Darryl starts to discover new things about himself following his divorce. Heather dates Greg for a bit, opening herself up. Even Josh, who initially seems like just a nice guy who's not too bright or ambitious and not right for Rebecca, starts to gain more depth and shading as we start to realize why he actually might be what Rebecca needs right now.
The music is super great too. Every episode feature around 2-3 songs, of a full variety of musical styles, Broadway and otherwise (I'll share some of my faves in a separate section.). The songs, depicted as taking place in the heads of the characters (usually Rebecca, but also the other characters from time to time) rarely advance the plot, but will usually either provide great insight into the characters or provide great satirical commentary on society, the style of song getting spoofed, or both. "The Sexy Getting Ready Song", for instance is a club song that depicts the great lengths women go to to get ready in full, unglamorous detail. "I Love My Daughter (But Not In A Creepy Way)" looks at those Country songs about fathers and daughters and how weird they can get. "Put Yourself First" is a Pussycat Dolls or Fifth Harmony style number about the mixed messaging those groups can have about being empowered, while still trying to get the guys attention. On the character and plot side of things though, "Settle For Me", is an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers-style musical number where Rebecca envisions Greg imploring her to settle. "Cold Showers" is a Music Man-style number where Rebecca manipulates people and sensationalizes a small issue as part of a scheme to spend time with Josh. And "You Stupid Bitch" is a heart-wrenching ballad as Rebecca sings about the depths of her self-hatred to an imaginary audience, who happily cheers it on and sings along. In true musical style, songs will also reprise themselves too, some in the episode they first appeared, but some several episodes later when you least expect it.
Lastly, the show is incredibly well-written and super funny in all aspects. Even at it's most heart-breaking (You Stupid Bitch), there's a clever line that'll have you smiling. The world of West Covina is a heightened place and there's a bunch of great minor and one-off characters from White Josh (a friend of Josh and Greg's who becomes more complex than he first appeared), to mute paralegal Mrs. Hernandez, to the rapper from the Sexy Getting Ready Song, who is so traumatized from what he saw, he decides to go "apologize to some bitches". The theme song is often expertly deployed after a character wonders why Rebecca is there or where she came from. The post-episode tags often take some throwaway joke from the episode (wondering what a Vampire Weekend is, a probate judge calling for a wildly inappropriate police escort) into comedy gold. Even the butter slogan that plays a part in Rebecca's move to West Covina (When Was The Last Time You Were Truly Happy?) turns into an incredible joke when you discover what motivated the copywriter to come up with that slogan (that in itself has become a running gag that becomes funnier every time it comes up).
So in the end, all of those elements I've mentioned above (and plenty I probably haven't. I don't think I even mentioned how Rachel Bloom won a Golden Globe for her performance as Rebecca) all add up to create a uniquely delightful television experience that engages and amuses me every week. If any of what I have written above appeals to you at all, you should definitely check it out. And if you need more convincing...
Obligatory Song Section
Sometimes seeing is believing. I was going to seed these songs throughout my post more organically but I decided saving most of them for the end is best. This is a selection of songs I think help capture the show's appeal. So here we go:
First is "Feeling Kinda Naughty", a song from early on when Rebecca is trying to befriend Valencia. It starts as a pop song in the vein of "I Kissed A Girl" or "Cool For The Summer", before taking on a much more sinister turn as Rebecca's obsession takes a dark turn.
Next is the aforementioned Settle For Me, presented in black and white for that authentic touch.
Then there's "I'm A Good Person", which is from a time when Greg calls Rebecca a bad person and she goes to great lengths to prove to him that isn't true.
Then there's "Textmergency", a hair band number from a group of people who get caught up in Rebecca's drama when she sends Josh an incredibly compromising text message in a later episode.
Lastly, there's "You Stupid Bitch", which is definitely one of the most heart-wrenching things I've seen on television this year so far.
So that's just a taste. This show just keeps getting better and better with every episode and with luck, it'll hopefully be around for a while at least. So check it out, yo!
So What Is It About? And That Title's Supposed To Be Ironic, Right?
Yes, the title's ironic. Even the theme song points out it's a "sexist term". That theme song (embedded above) probably does the best job of summing up the premise, while also showing off a bit of the show's tongue-in-cheek tone, female perspective, and musical ambitions, but I'll give it a shot. Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom, who also co-created the show) is a hardworking New York lawyer who is very accomplished, but very miserable and depressed. One day she runs into Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), her one-time boyfriend from summer camp 10 years ago, which was maybe the last time she was truly happy. She learns he's about to move back from New York to his hometown of West Covina, California but he tells her to hit him up if she's ever in SoCal. Following this encounter, she impulsively quits her job, moves to West Covina, and gets a new job at a small, local law firm. But she didn't move there for Josh, as she repeatedly attests in West Covina, the first of many musical numbers on the show.
From this starting point, a lot of things happen. Rebecca befriends Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), a paralegal at her firm who becomes Rebecca's confidante, champion, and enabler in her pursuit of Josh (not that Rebecca will admit a pursuit), living vicariously through Rebecca to avoid confronting how dissatisfying her home life has become. She connects with Josh and they become friends, despite the disapproval of Josh's long time girlfriend Valencia (Gabrielle Ruiz). Inserting herself into Josh's life also leads her to meet and bond with Josh's best friend Greg (Santino Fontana), an embittered bartender who can't help but fall for Rebecca, even as he becomes increasingly wary of her and her intentions. Also pulled into Rebecca's orbit are Darryl (Pete Gardner), her affable boss who is going through a divorce, and Heather (Vella Lovell), her cool, young, apathetic neighbour who can't help but be fascinated by Rebecca and her erratic behaviour.
So Why Do You Like This Show So Much?
Well for starters, it's surprisingly deep and complex. A musical comedy about a woman who follows her old ex-boyfriend across the country in an attempt to be happy doesn't seem like a sustainable premise for a ongoing TV show beyond a few episodes but the show makes it work by not being afraid to explore the full implications of that premise. What Rebecca's doing isn't healthy human behaviour and the show knows it, and isn't afraid to have people (including Dr. Phil at one point in a surprisingly great guest spot) call her on it, but it also doesn't judge her and has total empathy for why she's the way she is and why she does the things she does. Rebecca isn't just some wacky one-dimensional cartoon person. She has real issues in her past thanks to her overbearing, overcritical mother and her father walking out on her when she was young. She struggles with depression (continuing a nice trend right now of interesting and nuanced portrayals of depression on television) and self-hatred, among other things and you can see why a remembrance from a time when she was happy might cause her to take such drastic action.
The supporting characters also aren't just props solely around to bolster Rebecca's story. They all have real depth (even Valencia eventually) and lives of their own. Greg wants to go back to school but feels obliged to take care of his sick father. Paula has her marriage problems and is tempted by one of the firm's clients. Darryl starts to discover new things about himself following his divorce. Heather dates Greg for a bit, opening herself up. Even Josh, who initially seems like just a nice guy who's not too bright or ambitious and not right for Rebecca, starts to gain more depth and shading as we start to realize why he actually might be what Rebecca needs right now.
The music is super great too. Every episode feature around 2-3 songs, of a full variety of musical styles, Broadway and otherwise (I'll share some of my faves in a separate section.). The songs, depicted as taking place in the heads of the characters (usually Rebecca, but also the other characters from time to time) rarely advance the plot, but will usually either provide great insight into the characters or provide great satirical commentary on society, the style of song getting spoofed, or both. "The Sexy Getting Ready Song", for instance is a club song that depicts the great lengths women go to to get ready in full, unglamorous detail. "I Love My Daughter (But Not In A Creepy Way)" looks at those Country songs about fathers and daughters and how weird they can get. "Put Yourself First" is a Pussycat Dolls or Fifth Harmony style number about the mixed messaging those groups can have about being empowered, while still trying to get the guys attention. On the character and plot side of things though, "Settle For Me", is an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers-style musical number where Rebecca envisions Greg imploring her to settle. "Cold Showers" is a Music Man-style number where Rebecca manipulates people and sensationalizes a small issue as part of a scheme to spend time with Josh. And "You Stupid Bitch" is a heart-wrenching ballad as Rebecca sings about the depths of her self-hatred to an imaginary audience, who happily cheers it on and sings along. In true musical style, songs will also reprise themselves too, some in the episode they first appeared, but some several episodes later when you least expect it.
Lastly, the show is incredibly well-written and super funny in all aspects. Even at it's most heart-breaking (You Stupid Bitch), there's a clever line that'll have you smiling. The world of West Covina is a heightened place and there's a bunch of great minor and one-off characters from White Josh (a friend of Josh and Greg's who becomes more complex than he first appeared), to mute paralegal Mrs. Hernandez, to the rapper from the Sexy Getting Ready Song, who is so traumatized from what he saw, he decides to go "apologize to some bitches". The theme song is often expertly deployed after a character wonders why Rebecca is there or where she came from. The post-episode tags often take some throwaway joke from the episode (wondering what a Vampire Weekend is, a probate judge calling for a wildly inappropriate police escort) into comedy gold. Even the butter slogan that plays a part in Rebecca's move to West Covina (When Was The Last Time You Were Truly Happy?) turns into an incredible joke when you discover what motivated the copywriter to come up with that slogan (that in itself has become a running gag that becomes funnier every time it comes up).
So in the end, all of those elements I've mentioned above (and plenty I probably haven't. I don't think I even mentioned how Rachel Bloom won a Golden Globe for her performance as Rebecca) all add up to create a uniquely delightful television experience that engages and amuses me every week. If any of what I have written above appeals to you at all, you should definitely check it out. And if you need more convincing...
Obligatory Song Section
Sometimes seeing is believing. I was going to seed these songs throughout my post more organically but I decided saving most of them for the end is best. This is a selection of songs I think help capture the show's appeal. So here we go:
First is "Feeling Kinda Naughty", a song from early on when Rebecca is trying to befriend Valencia. It starts as a pop song in the vein of "I Kissed A Girl" or "Cool For The Summer", before taking on a much more sinister turn as Rebecca's obsession takes a dark turn.
Next is the aforementioned Settle For Me, presented in black and white for that authentic touch.
Then there's "Textmergency", a hair band number from a group of people who get caught up in Rebecca's drama when she sends Josh an incredibly compromising text message in a later episode.
Lastly, there's "You Stupid Bitch", which is definitely one of the most heart-wrenching things I've seen on television this year so far.
So that's just a taste. This show just keeps getting better and better with every episode and with luck, it'll hopefully be around for a while at least. So check it out, yo!
Saturday, 5 March 2016
Rebirth?
Previously On Kenny Sage Talks TV, Yo!...
Once upon a time there was a guy who loved TV, watched a lot of it, loved reading about TV, read about a lot of it, and who had way too much time on his hands. So he decided to start a blog where he would talk about TV and try to review it, like all those websites he read. And it was fine at first. He enjoyed it. Even early on, when his computer access became very limited through unforeseen circumstances he kept at it. Until he stopped.
Why? A combination of factors. Trying to do too much with too little and not being super great at thinking critically at the time, which led to not being happy with the quality of the work (you can read the archives before this post if you want, but I can't imagine why you would want to do that to yourself. It's largely terrible and doesn't really reach past fine), which led to increasingly not enjoying the work which led to stopping. Because if the enjoyment wasn't there, why do it? It was something he was doing just for fun and it wasn't fun anymore, So he stopped. But he kept watching TV and thinking about it and reading about it and talking about it to anyone who also cared about TV. And then he started wondering what could have been if he had just stayed with his blog. If he had cut down on coverage and kept playing with the format but kept writing, would he have found his voice? Would he start enjoying it again? If he started writing again, could he actually stay with it this time? He could never learn the answer to those first two questions. The third one though was a different story.
Which brings us to here. And the losing of that 3rd-person device (you're welcome). I've decided to start writing about TV again and this time, I hoping to not suddenly stop 8 months in (except for the summer, when I'll actually be off doing things that aren't watching TV. Updates will be minimal then.). I've decided to revive the old blog because it already exists and I don't want to sweep my old failures under the rug. I want to embrace them and hope that'll make me a better writer. That being said, I am not going back to any of my old formats. I'm going to be retooling things to make this easier to manage.
How? Well I'm probably not going to do weekly recaps. I might talk about a particular episode of something I really enjoyed but I don't want to feel constrained to do that every week, especially if I don't have much to say about it. What I am hoping to do is talk about shows I like in general. Shows that I think more people should be watching. I want to really go into why I like these shows so much and find things about these shows that might appeal to others. I'll mostly talk about shows currently airing (or streaming in the case of something like a Netflix show), but also hopefully older ones or more obscure ones (I know the world is clamouring for an entry about Danger 5). I also really want to talk about random episodes of TV I really like. Other than that, who knows? I'm keeping my options open. Maybe I'll even talk about non-TV things (how crazy would that be?).
All I know for sure is I want to start again. So whether you're an old reader (did I even have old readers? Never really figured that one out) or new, I hope you'll take this journey with me. Until I quit again. Just kidding. I hope.
Once upon a time there was a guy who loved TV, watched a lot of it, loved reading about TV, read about a lot of it, and who had way too much time on his hands. So he decided to start a blog where he would talk about TV and try to review it, like all those websites he read. And it was fine at first. He enjoyed it. Even early on, when his computer access became very limited through unforeseen circumstances he kept at it. Until he stopped.
Why? A combination of factors. Trying to do too much with too little and not being super great at thinking critically at the time, which led to not being happy with the quality of the work (you can read the archives before this post if you want, but I can't imagine why you would want to do that to yourself. It's largely terrible and doesn't really reach past fine), which led to increasingly not enjoying the work which led to stopping. Because if the enjoyment wasn't there, why do it? It was something he was doing just for fun and it wasn't fun anymore, So he stopped. But he kept watching TV and thinking about it and reading about it and talking about it to anyone who also cared about TV. And then he started wondering what could have been if he had just stayed with his blog. If he had cut down on coverage and kept playing with the format but kept writing, would he have found his voice? Would he start enjoying it again? If he started writing again, could he actually stay with it this time? He could never learn the answer to those first two questions. The third one though was a different story.
Which brings us to here. And the losing of that 3rd-person device (you're welcome). I've decided to start writing about TV again and this time, I hoping to not suddenly stop 8 months in (except for the summer, when I'll actually be off doing things that aren't watching TV. Updates will be minimal then.). I've decided to revive the old blog because it already exists and I don't want to sweep my old failures under the rug. I want to embrace them and hope that'll make me a better writer. That being said, I am not going back to any of my old formats. I'm going to be retooling things to make this easier to manage.
How? Well I'm probably not going to do weekly recaps. I might talk about a particular episode of something I really enjoyed but I don't want to feel constrained to do that every week, especially if I don't have much to say about it. What I am hoping to do is talk about shows I like in general. Shows that I think more people should be watching. I want to really go into why I like these shows so much and find things about these shows that might appeal to others. I'll mostly talk about shows currently airing (or streaming in the case of something like a Netflix show), but also hopefully older ones or more obscure ones (I know the world is clamouring for an entry about Danger 5). I also really want to talk about random episodes of TV I really like. Other than that, who knows? I'm keeping my options open. Maybe I'll even talk about non-TV things (how crazy would that be?).
All I know for sure is I want to start again. So whether you're an old reader (did I even have old readers? Never really figured that one out) or new, I hope you'll take this journey with me. Until I quit again. Just kidding. I hope.
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